The sentence landed with more weight than he probably intended it to, and for a moment the three of them were slightly quieter, which Mike read as something specific to Jay rather than to the conversation. He did not pull at it.

"She’s got dark hair, usually straight, about this tall," Jay supplied, making a gesture that was imprecise but gave a general reference. "I’ve seen them together twice."

"The second time they noticed me and separated so fast it looked choreographed." He almost smiled. "Nobody’s snitching on Joseph, though. He’s got a certain kind of..."

"Capital," Mike said.

"Yeah, that."

"What’s Bella like?" Mike said. "As a person, not as a situation."

Tobin thought about this in the same way he thought about things he actually cared about getting right. "She’s warm."

"The kind of person who remembers what you said two weeks ago and asks about it the next time she sees you."

"She does video work, mostly documentary-style; she posted a short piece last semester about the market vendors in District 5, and it got picked up by one of the regional culture sites." He paused. "She laughs a lot. Not at things, but with things. There’s a distinction." 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

"She sounds like someone who makes poor decisions about who she gets attached to," Cody said, kindly.

"Most interesting people do," Tobin said.

Mike noted this. Joseph Hayden was the newly appointed captain, a friend of Kyle Hudson, and the person who had invited Mike to a social event, to which Mike had declined due to prior commitments.

Enforcer of a rule he was himself violating, which was the kind of structural irony that Mike found useful in ways he hadn’t yet fully mapped.

"What about the media arts program more generally?" Mike said. "Who else is in her circle?"

"Why do you ask?" Tobin said, and he said it with the mild alertness of someone who has just noticed that the questions have a direction to them.

Mike looked at him without particular urgency.

"I’m getting a sense of the campus," he said. "Same reason I walked at night yesterday."

"You understand a place better when you know who’s in it."

Tobin looked at him for a moment and then appeared to decide this was a satisfying answer, which it was designed to be. "There’s a guy named Felix who does sound design."

"He and Bella run in the same group."

"He’s fine, not very interesting."

"There’s a woman named Adaeze, final year; she’s been shortlisted for a national student film award."

"She’s serious about it in the way that people are serious when they’ve given up the option of not being," he listed with the ease of someone who had acquired a lot of information through proximity and general interest rather than any specific intent. "And then there’s the usual rotation of people who are attached to media arts socially without being enrolled in it."

"That program attracts a certain kind of person who wants to be around creative work without doing it themselves."

"Which kind?" Cody said.

"The kind who goes to every opening and talks about their own project that they’re still developing." Tobin expressed this observation without cruelty, yet he did not soften his words. "You know the type."

"My cousin is exactly that type," Cody said.

"I know," Tobin said. "I’ve met your cousin."

Cody, who had been quiet for a moment, looked at Mike with the grin of someone about to participate in a joke he was setting up himself.

"You know what, though," he said, "since we’re naming people."

He looked at Jay. "Jay’s mum."

Mike’s eyebrow twitched. ’Oh...? Now this is the good shit I’ve been waiting for.’

Jay’s reaction mirrored Cody’s earlier response: he gave a light punch to Cody’s shoulder, which Cody accepted without complaint.

"I’m being serious," Cody said, even though he was not being serious at all. "She has been feeling lonely ever since her dad took that contract abroad."

"Eight months. That’s a long time. And she’s, I mean..." He spread his hands as if to indicate something obvious.

"Don’t," Jay said.

"I’m just saying from an objective—"

"Cody."

"I’m saying she’s clearly doing fine and handling the whole situation with a lot of dignity, and that’s actually very—"

"Cody," Jay said again with more weight behind it this time.

"Admirable," Cody finished, and his expression was the expression of someone who had enjoyed this to exactly the right degree and was now prepared to retire it.

Tobin looked at the sky. "Very diplomatic."

"I thought so," Cody said.

Mike said nothing.

He was observing the campus below, watching the movement of people between buildings and noting how the clouds were arranging themselves above the roofline of the arts faculty. In a separate, organized part of his mind, he was reviewing what he had discovered on Jay’s phone during the three hours between arriving home at four-thirty and falling asleep.

Jay’s contact list was informative. His home address was saved under "Mum," accompanied by a note that read, "District 4-Morrison Close—the big green gate."

Mike had glanced at it once before pushing it aside in his mind until it became pertinent. The phone had been returned before any of this information appeared to be necessary.

It was now relevant.

Marielle Vaughn. Her full name was saved in Jay’s contacts, suggesting either a habit or a formality.

She had a husband who had been abroad for eight months and owned a large property in District 4.

Mike had not sought this information. He had found Jay’s phone after Jay dropped it in the dark while fleeing. Mike picked it up instinctively, as he often did, and the contents revealed themselves as available information—information he found useful.

He remained silent about any of this. He allowed Cody’s joke to run its course, let Jay’s objections unfold, and let Tobin steer the conversation in another direction. He engaged in the remainder of the rooftop hour with the relaxed attention of someone savoring a pleasant Friday afternoon.

...

By the time he left them, he had already made the decision about Morrison Close.

He had made it, if he were honest with himself, during the rooftop hour. The decision was not influenced by Cody’s joke, as it was irrelevant to the situation.

Before that, Jay had described Marielle indirectly by saying "don’t" to Cody, conveying the weight of someone who was protecting something genuine rather than merely performing the expected objection.

That weight represented information. Mike relied on information.

He walked through the campus toward the north exit at a pace that was neither hurried nor slow, passing the arts building and the path that ran alongside it, and he thought about what he was doing in the careful, systematic way he always deliberated about approaches before he made them.

The situation appeared straightforward on the surface. Jay had become Mike’s lapdog, a relationship that was useful but inherently limited.

Such arrangements tended to remain beneficial longer when anchored by multiple factors. If someone was only going along with things because of incriminating footage, they might eventually decide that the risk of that footage being revealed was worth it compared to constantly giving in.

Mike had seen people make that calculation before, and it was always easier when there were no other stakes.

A mother was different. A mother who had been shown something, who had processed it, and who had come to her own understanding of what her son had done—this was an anchor of an entirely different kind.

This was not because Mike intended to use Marielle against Jay in any direct way. But Jay, who was not stupid and understood leverage instinctively, would know that his mother now knew.

This knowledge would have its own impact, requiring no further action from Mike.

There was also the other thing, which was that Marielle Vaughn had been described as a woman who had been alone in a quiet house for eight months, and Mike was curious about her in the same straightforward way that he was curious about most things that had not yet been fully seen.

He recognized the difference between the two motivations without comparing them. Both were valid. That was acceptable.

Morrison Close was a ten-minute walk from the campus’s north exit, which Mike established at half past three on Friday afternoon while ostensibly making his way back toward the District 2 transit line.

He had reviewed Jay’s schedule using Tyler’s preliminary information, confirmed it with the biography posted on the business faculty’s undergraduate activities board, and cross-referenced it with the football club’s training schedule.

Jay trained on Friday evenings, spending time at the athletics facility from four to six. Prior to that, he had a group project meeting scheduled for two o’clock, which Tyler had noted since the group met in the east wing study room, which Tyler occasionally attempted to use.

In other words, Jay was not at home.

Morrison Close was precisely what the name suggested: a closed lane, tranquil, the type of street in the northern section of District 4 that did not experience through traffic, thus remaining quiet in the afternoons.

Number eleven featured a large, substantial green wooden gate, which conveyed a sense of privacy rather than security, as the property within was a statement of its own.

Mike paused on the pavement outside for a moment, adjusted the collar of his jacket, and pressed the bell.

DING DONG!